I’ve taken out private health cover - and I hate myself for it

My friend and I are chatting on the phone.

“So for £44 a month, you get cover for your hips, knees, cataracts and the Big C,” I tell her.

“It’s a bargain, particularly if you never use it.”

We burst out laughing.

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“Who’d have thought when we met up 40 years ago that we’d be having these kind of chats,” she said.

Then, it was all about fine looking men and a wee mini dress in Mirror Mirror with a gold head band and slow dancing to A Whiter Shade of Pale at the uni disco.

Procul Harum.. What was that song about?

It was also about drinking Stag cider – does that still exist? - and stopping for a kebab and chips in Ranelagh on the way home because you always got the munchies.

But that was then.

Now we are 60 and sometimes it feels like we’re doing that old favourite from the mother and baby group… “Head and shoulders, knees and toes…”

It’s a bit like the hokey cokey and involves a lot of bending and stretching and pointing at body parts, only it’s clacky hips and frozen shoulders now – a macabre dance.

The trouble is that I feel like I’ve surrendered my values and my respect for and belief in the NHS by paying £44 a month for a private health policy.

It covers – yes - knees, hips, cataracts and cancer.

If the NHS sees me and can deal with it in six weeks, then that is where I go.

But I know too many people trying to live in pain with mobility issues.

It’s a bit like the hokey cokey and involves a lot of bending and stretching and pointing at body parts, only it’s clacky hips and frozen shoulders now – a macabre dance

These people include those who have walked half of South America and up and down the foothills of the Himalayas – pacing, it’s all about pacing - and are now struggling.

And having witnessed friends in dire straits and gulped at the waiting lists, I have finally crossed to the dark side.

It is painful to admit it but it would be even more painful to hobble about for years.

A good friend has a novel idea.

“If you went outside, fell down and broke your hip, you’d be straight into hospital and you’d be sorted quickly,” she pointed out.

“If the need arises, feel free to follow me into the dark night and push me hard down the steps,” I said.

It reminded me of the night of the uneaten Chinese takeaway.

One of us, not me, sliced his finger open on a plate before I got even a quick spoon of the bang bang chicken.

We thought briefly about which A&E to visit, then the bloody fountain necessitated less talk more action. We went.

It was Saturday night crazy. There were bodies everywhere.

At one stage, the doors flipped open and two policemen came in escorting a prisoner through the chaos.

Lucky prisoner got to skip the queue.

My husband, he of the half-severed finger, looked longingly.

“What if I go outside and chuck a brick at a window and you video me and ring the cops and they’ll arrest me and take me right through casualty, just like that,” he whispered.

It was tempting.

We did get seen and then we got forgotten about again and eventually returned home at 1am to congealed bang bang chicken and a bloody shattered plate.

Accidents are not unusual in my family.

The McCanns were always accidents waiting to happen.

There was a lot of tumbling out of bunk beds and falling off garden walls… of fracturing of arms and of legs.

The sister in charge of the casualty department was no mere acquaintance.

When our father would bring his injured lamb in, “Which one of us is it this time, Mr McCann?” she’d shout down the packed waiting room, with a wearied sigh.

Those were the days when you got in and out of the emergency room in a couple of hours. Those were the good old days.

Now, I’m bringing in the new year with a glass of bubbly in one hand and a private health insurance policy in the other. I hate myself for doing it.

Still, the best present will be never needing it.